Skin Deep (Station Seventeen #1)(9)

Walker nodded. “The rest of the closet is empty and nothing else was on the shelf. These fell out of the box with the pictures.” He pointed to the baggie full of jewelry and the bundle of rope, the same thin, white nylon kind used in the photos.

Unfortunately, it was used in a ton of other places, too, and the rope on the floor looked brand new. “Okay.” Her brain spun, trying to calculate how long it would take to get a crime scene unit out here. Chances were there was little to no evidence to go on in the rest of the house, especially after the fire, but who knew. They might get lucky. “Thanks for calling this in.”

“I take it Seventeen is done with the scene?” Sinclair asked, and Captain Bridges answered with a tight nod.

“The house will still be monitored by the RFD for the next twenty-four hours to make sure nothing flares back up. But yes. We’re about to head out.”

“Okay, thanks. We’ll let you know if we need anything else. Sharp eyes, Walker.”

“Just doing my job, Sergeant.”

Although he delivered the words without attitude, they bulls-eyed into Isabella’s sternum all the same. She flicked a nanosecond’s worth of a glance at Kellan, but he’d already aimed his boots toward the door. Which was fine, really, because she had work to do.

I trusted you, and you put my sister’s life at risk! That fucking psycho nearly killed her, Moreno. Do you have any idea what I could’ve lost?

Isabella’s heart twisted involuntarily, her mouth going dry as the image of a bright-eyed girl with dark braids and an entire life to live flashed through her mind’s eye.

Yeah. Even if Kellan didn’t know it, Isabella had every idea of what he could’ve lost.

And wasn’t that all the more reason to focus on nailing whoever was hurting women in the here and now?

“I’ll go ahead and do a quick look-see to make sure nothing got missed from the closet down here. Then I’ll call the fire marshal’s office to let him know we’ll need full access for CSU,” she said, locking her resolve into place as she turned toward Sinclair. “We can probably get a unit down here by lunchtime. Those guys owe me a favor for—”

“Hold on for just a second, Moreno. Don’t you think you’re jumping in a little hard?”

She let go of a shocked exhale. “No. I think I’m taking this seriously.”

Sinclair measured her with a slow glance that said he was choosing his words with care. “You take all your calls seriously. It’s what makes you a good cop. All I’m saying is maybe we should take a closer look and see if there’s something here to pursue before we go all gangbusters.”

Isabella’s chin hiked, her palms going slick beneath the clingy material of her nitrile gloves. “See if there’s something here? Are you kidding me?”

She knew playing Devil’s Advocate was a smart way to get all the angles on a case, just like she knew leading with your emotions could give you tunnel vision, or worse yet, get good cops into bad trouble. But the girls in the photos were bound and bruised, for fuck’s sake. There was no telling what might’ve happened to them off camera, if they’d been hurt or made to do things. Or worse. How was she supposed to take her emotions out of that?

“This looks like abuse at the very least. At worst, maybe forced prostitution or rape—God, Sam, are you looking at these pictures?” She swiped a photograph from the top of the pile on the desk in front of her, trying like hell to keep her anger in check so her hand wouldn’t shake.

“I am,” he said, a muscle pulling tight across his jawline. “And I’m trying to see them objectively, like all other potential evidence. Look at the background.”

Her stomach churned, but she forced her focus away from the girl in the photograph, taking in the black settee along with the dark red walls behind it. “What about it?”

“It’s not here, for one.” Sinclair gestured to the dingy, low-rent room around them with a quick lift of his hand. “These pictures look like they were taken someplace way more upscale. Like maybe a sex club.”

“Or an Internet porn set,” Isabella argued, but Sinclair just nodded.

“Neither of which are illegal all by themselves. As off-putting as these pictures may be to some, others participate in rough sex acts consensually. Including people who star in Internet porn,” he reminded her.

He had a point. Albeit a thin one. “What about her expression?” she challenged. “This girl looks about as far from enjoying herself as it gets.”

“Maybe,” Sinclair said, the muscle ticking in his jawline telling Isabella in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t unaffected by the photo. “But a large part of BDSM culture, not to mention porn, is role play. Acting. There are too many rape fantasy videos on some of these websites to even count.”

Gut clenching, Isabella took a different tack. “Yeah, but the girls in these photos barely look eighteen.”

“Barely eighteen and not eighteen are two totally different scenarios. I’m not saying I agree with either,” he said, cutting off her brewing protest with a surprisingly soft tone. “But you and I both know one of those things won’t make a case. Without an ID on any of these women, we have no way of knowing whether what’s happening in these pictures is consensual kink or a sex crime.”